Nearly 108 years ago a baby boy named Harold Rolfe Owen was born in Yorkshire. At the age of 18 he was part of the Royal Flying Corps when in 1917 like many of his colleagues he sustained serious injuries in a plane crash. After a lengthy period of recovery back in England, he began work in the motor industry with the racing driver Jack Barclay. In 1932 at the age of 33 he opened his own car dealership in Mayfair. Throughout the next few years Harold Owen established a reputation for honest dealing and the quality of its vehicles, helped by close links to Rolls-Royce. The Second World War, however, brought an abrupt halt to the sale of motor cars for personal use, as manufacturers focused on the war effort. H.R. Owen was closed down for the duration of the conflict, and the business was put up for sale after its founder died on tank manoeuvres in 1940. The business changed hands several times after it was first purchased with a takeover by Heron International in 1970, the Malaya Group in 1994, and Philipine based Berjaya Group in 2013. Thus the name of HR Owen is no longer linked to the honest dealings of Harold Rolfe Owen. However it seems inconceivable that if was still alive that he would not have adopted the payment of all of his staff, based on the living wage. Yet this story in yesterdays Guardian tells us that the business which last year made £48m profit on a turnover of £335m which employs its cleaners through an agency called Templewood Cleaning Services is paying its cleaners the national living wage rather than the London living wage. The difference between the two rates of pay is £2.25 per hour. The couple who feature in the article clean two salesrooms, taking up 4 hours each night for 6 nights a week. This means that the cost of upgrading their pay would be just over £50 per week for each of the cleaners. A small sum to HR Owen and a significant amount for the people who are now suspended from work they carried out for the last five years. HR Owen and Templewood should be ashamed of themselves, no doubt Harold Rolfe Owen will be turning in his grave.